Coach's College

David and I are very enthusiastic about a new offering of ours, the Coach’s College. Teaching people how to coach others has turned out to be an interesting project, and we have learned much about the process and pacing of this sort of executive education in the last year. To be clear, the Coach’s College is not a public program. We've created the offering for organizations whose members already have a basic level of Personal Mastery, and who want to generate 'in house' coaching resources. The value of the Coach’s College, we have learned, is in building a sustainable coaching culture in the organization, where coaching is desired, accessed, and utilized for improved results all round. The main thing we have learned is that Coaching skills are highly, highly resistant to being taught didactically. We simply cannot lecture about Coaching, and expect anyone to learn any skills they can use. The work of the coach is so personal and so direct that a coaching education dominated by lecture seems to serve only to cloud the awareness of the would-be coach, as they try to recall the ‘theory’ they learned or attempt to remember what they are ‘supposed’ to do. Practice and application is the key. In the Coach’s College, we teach the idea that ‘problem solving’ (for a coachee, or coaching client) is rarely the highest and best use of a coach’s time. We suggest, alternatively, that the coach helps the individual see their behaviors and beliefs relative to the presenting issue, and focus there. When we are face to face with ‘a problem to solve,’ most of us resort to what we are already good at: relating the problem to our own experience and giving advice. This may be well-meaning, but it is rarely transformative. To effectively combat the accustomed myopia of problem-solving, David, Rick and I employ multiple cycles of actual coaching practice and debrief. We are finding this approach to teaching Coaching extremely effective. The multiple practice cycles and the multiple learning roles (coach, coachee, and observer) ensure a ‘deep dive’ into the art and science of coaching. We're stoked. This may be our strongest, most applied learning program yet. The feedback has been very good and we realize that there may be other organizations and teams for whom the Coach’s College may be of interest. Let us know if this is you.